SECO updated the ISIL/Da'esh–Al-Kaida list (SR 946.231.08) in April, following a UN Sanctions Committee decision of 30 March 2026, with SESAM updated on 31 March. The Taliban list (SR 946.231.07) was updated separately in March under a different FINMA notice. FINMA's forwarding notices are, as usual, three sentences each. The operational point matters more than the updates themselves: today's piece by Dr. von Tatzenberg on Switzerland's ISIL/Al-Kaida ordinance explains why these designations sit outside the standard country-programme screening workflow — they run under the UN-1267 track, which EU-mirroring sanctions systems do not reach by default. An updated list is only useful if the screening is pointed at the right ordinance.

In C-133/24 CD Tondela and Others, the Grand Chamber held that no-poach agreements of this type may restrict competition by object under Art. 101 TFEU — but explicitly recognised a legitimate-objective pathway: stability of player rosters and regularity of sporting competitions can take an agreement outside Art. 101(1) altogether. Final classification was referred back to the Portuguese national tribunal to determine, in a precise and reasoned manner, whether the agreement restricts competition by object on the facts. The clubs' pandemic-solidarity argument did not generate a categorical safe harbour, but the Grand Chamber did not issue a definitive object classification. For in-house teams managing HR practices across EU jurisdictions, the exposure is real — no-poach clauses carry Art. 101 risk, and no automatic crisis exception applies — but the Grand Chamber left room for a legitimate-objective defence that the national court must now resolve. The analysis does not stop at football.

In C-747/22 INPS, the Grand Chamber held that an Italian condition requiring ten years of continuous residence for access to certain social-assistance benefits constituted indirect discrimination contrary to Directive 2011/95/EU — the Recast Qualification Directive on standards for beneficiaries of international protection. The rule fell disproportionately on beneficiaries of subsidiary protection (international protection status). The principle is portable within its beneficiary class: any EU employment or benefits condition structured around residence length that disadvantages beneficiaries of international protection will need fresh proportionality justification under Directive 2011/95/EU. Companies managing cross-border secondment programmes or HR frameworks that include residence-based benefit conditions should audit whether those conditions may capture employees holding subsidiary protection status, and whether they can withstand a proportionality challenge under the Recast Qualification Directive.

The Federal Department of Economic Affairs (WBF) has amended the annex to the Sudan Ordinance of 25 May 2005, implementing a UN Sanctions Committee for Sudan decision of 28 April 2026. Unlike the Russia, Belarus, or Iran frameworks — which mirror EU Council regulation update cycles — Sudan is a UN-based regime with no EU mirroring and no published lag metric. We noted in May how even the EU-mirroring regimes can run twenty days behind Brussels; Sudan follows UN committee timing directly, with no EU package adoption date as a reference point. If your screening vendor populates sanctions feeds from EU-package adoption dates, Sudan is not in that logic. Worth a direct verification with the vendor.

Swissinfo reports that Switzerland is closing some of its foreign-bribery enforcement gaps but structural weaknesses persist — a piece that reads differently alongside today's two articles on the same terrain. Dr. von Tatzenberg's analysis of the Art. 102 StGB compliance gap locates the problem not in prosecutorial reluctance but in the corporate liability provision itself: the secondary liability route only triggers where the company cannot identify the culpable individual, a threshold that a well-structured internal compliance programme often prevents from ever being reached. Casimir von Firn's piece on Art. 322septies adds the gift-policy dimension: the statute asks about the corrupt act, not the object's value. We covered the gift-policy angle from a different direction in May — today's piece goes deeper into the statutory text. Together, these three sources frame the same enforcement gap from the outside, the statute, and the gift desk.

Advocacy groups are pushing for cobalt to be included in the NUFG Vernehmlassung, pointing to DRC supply chains — roughly 70% of global cobalt output — where documented human-rights risks begin at extraction. The Vernehmlassung remains open. The operative point for compliance teams: the EU CSDDD already binds Swiss exporters contractually before the NUFG framework exists. If cobalt enters the Swiss statutory scope, companies with DRC exposure face due-diligence obligations on two parallel tracks — one contractual, one statutory — with no unified compliance template covering both. That gap belongs in term sheets now, not after the ordinance passes.

FINMA announced earlier this year that its Zurich presence is relocating from the centre to Zurich-Oerlikon, citing operating costs and working conditions. If your compliance team has in-person dealings with FINMA Zurich — enforcement meetings, supervisory dialogues, on-site visits — update the contact logistics before you need the address on short notice. The Bern headquarters is unchanged.

Baker McKenzie is rolling out Legora — a Swedish legal AI platform — firm-wide across all six practice groups in a phased deployment. The procurement implication for in-house teams: as AI becomes standard in external-counsel delivery, associate hours will compress on routine work and the mix of what you are paying for changes. Engagement letters written before firm-wide AI deployment now describe a working relationship that no longer exists in the same form. The Baker McKenzie announcement and Anthropic's simultaneous release of 12 Claude practice-area plugins — covered next — are the same signal arriving from two directions in the same week.

Anthropic has released 12 domain-specific Claude plugins for legal practice areas — compliance, regulatory, corporate, and others — alongside connectors to more than 20 established legaltech platforms. For Swiss in-house teams, the compliance and regulatory plugins are the ones to watch: they will standardise how regulatory research is surfaced and presented by outside counsel, which in turn changes what "review for compliance issues" means as an instruction. The methodology question — whose AI ran which pass on which document — is already present in every transaction; the standard-of-care question will arrive in litigation not long after.

The UK government has not brought forward the promised legislation to reverse the Supreme Court's 2023 PACCAR decision, which invalidated many third-party funding agreements as unlawful damages-based arrangements. Funders who structured UK-seated arbitration financings under pre-PACCAR terms are sitting on uncertainty with no fix in sight. Swiss arbitration seats — Geneva and Zurich — do not carry this enforceability risk: the Swiss PIL framework does not impose equivalent DBA constraints on funding arrangements. The Westminster silence is, quietly, a comparative advantage for Swiss seats that arbitration practitioners here should be aware of when clients ask about seat selection.

Carta — the US equity management platform used by most VC-backed companies for cap table administration, employee equity, and fund compliance — has acquired UK ALSP Avantia and is launching Carta Law, described as an AI-powered law firm for private capital clients. The integration logic is straightforward: Carta already holds the data; adding legal drafting on top of that data layer removes the need to instruct external counsel on routine fund documents. Swiss venture counsel and fund administrators whose clients rely on Carta for equity infrastructure should note the direction of travel. Routine fund work is where the volume is, and the platform is now explicitly in scope for it.

AlixPartners' survey finds that US in-house teams anticipate a rising disputes environment driven by economic stress, AI liability exposure, and cybersecurity failures. The Swiss read-through: EU AI Act obligations are landing in the same window as a hardening global disputes climate. In-house teams that have treated AI Act compliance as a documentation exercise — policy written, filed, not operationalised — may find those gaps surfaced first in a dispute, not a regulatory inspection. The documents you cannot produce are the ones the other side will ask for. That is the same observation that applies to sanctions compliance, gift policies, and supply-chain due diligence.